We keep seeing all these postings about legislators proposing more and more and keep piling on with more proposals of "warm and fuzzy' and "feel good" laws, designed to "protect" the public. As genealogists we are not wanting the legislator to protect us, we are perfectly capable of protecting ourselves. When our forebears wrote the fundamental papers for founding our country, they wrote laws so the citizens could be protected from the government. Over two hundred years ago, the citizenry must not have trusted those who governed.

We only need to be allowed to do our research and compile our family trees. When will they ram a piece of legislation through which will CLOSE ALL VITAL RECORDS, period? Closing a birth record for 100 years and a death record for 75 years is tatamount to just that.

The biggest help we have here in the Sunshine State of Florida is our own "government in the sunshine" constitution. When open records laws were written it was for the public to know what records are being kept by their state government, not how many records which could be closed and kept away from the public.

Almost all records in all states can be obtained if a person wishes to be somewhat creative about making the request and I am sure every reader knows exactly what I am making reference to. Probably an adoption file would be the only thing almost totally protected against intrusion.

My request to all state legislators is to go back to legislating taxation rules, land use rules, levels of authority, etc, and stay out of genealogy. I feel pretty sure most of them cannot even spell the word correctly, much less write rules concerning it.